Soundgarden - Ultramega OK (2LP)

Ultramega OK catches Soundgarden at that thrilling moment when a band’s instincts are outpacing the budget, and the ideas are too big to be contained by whatever studio clock they were watching. Released in 1988 on SST, it’s the first full-length from the Seattle crew and it still feels like a sideways blueprint for what grunge would become, even though Soundgarden were never content to sit in one lane. You can hear the Sabbath crush, the punk bite, and a strange psychedelic tug all pulling at once, with Chris Cornell howling like he’s chasing something only he can see.

Spin the opener, Flower, and you get it right away. Kim Thayil’s guitar chugs and slides in that lurching, drop-tuned way he made his own, then Cornell erupts with a wail that seems to split the air. Head Injury follows with a nastier edge, more frantic than the epics they’d write later but already loaded with detail. The rhythm section is the quiet killer here. Hiro Yamamoto’s bass keeps everything rooted while Matt Cameron plays with a drummer’s curiosity, always finding a half-step or a ghost note that turns a straight beat into something more elastic. Beyond the Wheel is the one I always push on friends who think early Soundgarden is just noise. It’s immense, near-hypnotic, and built around a vocal that somehow sounds both ancient and brand new. If you’ve only heard the later hits, this track alone can rewire your sense of what Cornell could do.

There’s a covers choice that says a lot about where their heads were at. Smokestack Lightning, the Howlin’ Wolf standard, gets pulled through their grinder until it rumbles like distant thunder. It’s reverent in spirit, not in arrangement, which suits them. Incessant Mace leans into the band’s noir streak, a slow-blooming menace that shows how much drama they could conjure without going soft. Mood for Trouble is another curveball, haunted and melodic, proof that they were writing songs, not just riff exercises.

People still debate the sound of Ultramega OK. Even the band did. They were open in interviews about not loving the original mix and how it didn’t quite capture the weight they were going for. That’s why the 2017 Sub Pop reissue mattered. Jack Endino went back to the original tapes and gave it the clarity and muscle they’d wanted in the first place. If you’re chasing Ultramega OK vinyl, that remixed edition brings out the low-end heft and the grain in Cornell’s voice without sanding off the weirdness. It’s the copy I recommend to anyone building a Soundgarden vinyl shelf, though the SST original has its own scrappy charm and historical pull.

Context-wise, this record did serious ground work for their mainstream leap. It earned Soundgarden a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance in 1990, which was a wild thing to see attached to a band that still sounded this feral. It put them on the wider map and paved the way for the jump to A&M and Louder Than Love the following year. You can hear seeds of Badmotorfinger all over the place, especially in the way Thayil uses dissonance as colour rather than pure abrasion. Yet Ultramega OK stands on its own. It’s rougher, more local, closer to the basement show than the arena, and that’s part of its grip.

One of the great pleasures is how physical the album feels on a turntable. This is music that likes air moving in a room. The Endino remix makes Cameron’s toms thud in a way that digital streams don’t quite match, and the guitars sprawl wider. If you’re looking to buy Soundgarden records online, keep an eye out for that Sub Pop run, but don’t sleep on a clean SST copy if you find it while crate digging. I’ve stumbled over both in the wild at a Melbourne record store or two, and it’s the kind of title that vanishes fast from the new arrivals bin. For anyone browsing vinyl records Australia wide, it’s worth setting an alert because Soundgarden albums on vinyl tend to spike whenever interest swings back to the early Seattle era.

Ultramega OK isn’t a tidy origin story. It’s rowdy, a bit crooked at the edges, and absolutely alive. That’s why it endures. When the needle hits Flower or Beyond the Wheel, you’re not just hearing a young band. You’re hearing a city’s sound coagulate in real time, a singer testing the limits of his range, and a guitarist drawing up a strange, heavy language that would inspire a thousand copycats. Thirty-plus years on, it still feels like a door swinging open.